Bed availability as a significant influence on rates of committal to New Zealand's psychiatric hospitals.

Analysis of the data on committal to psychiatric institutions shows that there is a wide variation in risk of committal between hospital board areas and that this risk is strongly related to the availability of psychiatric institutional beds. The risk of remaining in an institution as a committed patient is even more strongly related to bed availability. These findings, which suggest that committal may be less related to objective clinical criteria than to other external factors, are of concern in view of the revision to compulsory treatment procedures currently before Parliament.